The combination of Red Smith's passing, the political correctness of the rest of the paper, and a grown man with a name like Buster somehow combined to ensure that I'd never read anything by Mr. Olney until this book. That was certainly my own loss, as he proves to be a tremendous journalist and a good, if not necessarily great, writer. He'll never be confused with Smith, Roger Angell or Tom Boswell, but that's an awfully high standard. Meanwhile, he makes excellent use of the dramatic arc he's been handed in order to portray the rise and "fall" of the latest Yankee dynasty as a kind of Greek tragedy, complete with a "hero," the Yankees' notorious owner, who succumbs to hubris:

For a decade, George Steinbrenner had grudgingly deferred to some of his high-ranking baseball advisors -- Gene Michael, Brian Cashman, Joe Torre, Mark Newman -- when major decisions were considered. But some of his executives thought the loss to the Diamondbacks damaged their credibility in the owner's eyes. Steinbrenner took the reins back, veering onto his own erratic course, following his impetuous instincts. "You have no idea, day to day, what he's going to do," said one club official in 2003.

The Yankees have obviously remained a very good team, but you can't help noticing that as Mr. Olney somewhat audaciously predicted in the title of his book, they haven't won a World Series in a while now.

The format of the book is reminiscent of Daniel Okrent's great Nine Innings, as Mr. Olney intercuts a series of biographies and set pieces of reportage about the building of the Yankee team with the play by play of Game 7 of the 2001 World Series. Along the way he makes it very much harder for a Yankee hater to dislike guys like Paul O'Neill, Scot Brosius, Tino Martinez and Mariano Rivera and develops a real sense of admiration for the work that Gene Michael in particular, but also Joe Torre, Brian Cashman and company put into developing a team that would play a certain brand of baseball. In this last regard, the book could almost be considered par of a trilogy--along with Moneyball and Feeding the Monster--about how the modern understanding of baseball statistics and some managerial vision, persistence, and patience can be used to build a winning ball club. But it also demonstrates just how hard it is to get the guys who write the pay checks to stick to the plan.